Most of Christ’s earthly life was hidden. He was hidden in his mother’s womb, he was hidden in Egypt and in Nazareth. During his public life he was hidden often, when he fled into ‘a mountain to pray.’ During the forty days of his risen life, again and again he disappeared and hid himself from men. Today he is hidden in the Blessed Sacrament, in Heaven, and in his mystical body on earth. But in his Passion he was exposed, made public property to the whole of mankind. The last time he went up into a mountain to pray, it was to pray out loud, in a voice that would echo down the ages, ringing in the ears of mankind forever. It was to be stripped naked before the whole world, forever, not only in body, but in mind and soul . . .Every detail of his Passion revealed something more of his character as man. Not only his heroism and his majesty, but his human necessities, and the human limitations which he deliberately adopted as part of his plan of love, in order to be able to indwell in us as we are, with our limitations and psychological as well as physical necessities and interdependence on one another.

– Caryll Houselander